


Five of Cups

by LadyNighteyes



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 07:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1218379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNighteyes/pseuds/LadyNighteyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Radiant Historia, Selvan, Five of Cups</p><p>The Five of Cups shows a figure mourning over three spilled cups, while two stand unregarded behind them. It means bereavement, grief, loss, and, perhaps, the need to regroup and move beyond that loss. Spoilers for near the end of the Alternate History.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five of Cups

**Author's Note:**

> I found [this prompt by oneill](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/215554.html?thread=8974850) while I was spamming upwards of a dozen RH posts on fic_promptly. Given that it involved two of my favorite things (Radiant Historia and tarot symbolism), I couldn't leave it alone.

Dias is dead. Their plans have failed. Their kingdom has fallen. And now, as he flees like a dog with its tail between its legs, Selvan tries, as calmly as he is able, to decide who to blame.

The young princess- probably queen by now, he thinks- would be the obvious choice, but an ingenuous one. This is a war, and she is an enemy; he even warned Dias that perhaps they were underestimating the girl. The princess and her army of traitors and beasts and desert savages killed him, but they would have killed anyone foolhardy enough to get in their way. Not that Selvan wouldn't like to see the lot of them burn for it, but they aren't the ones truly to blame.

It's Hugo. Selvan has come to hate the man with a passion over the last few months, and throwing Dias to the wolves is simply one final strike against him. The general has no _vision_ , no desire to do what needs done. All that drives him is an almost childlike greed, and it repulses Selvan. There is no elegance to it. He almost longs for Protea by comparison; she at least could be placated with luxuries.

Selvan has always wanted to build a kingdom that will stand long after he's gone, and Dias shared his dream. But Hugo, he realized much too late, doesn't care about the future, and now the rot at the foundation of his country has brought theirs down with it. Selvan would seethe at what was lost, even if his partner had made it out alive. But with Dias gone, he _rages_. The man destroys whatever he touches, and then he has the gall to send Dias to his death to cover his cowardly retreat, hauling Selvan along as a near-prisoner to keep the few Granorgite soldiers still fighting for him from deserting. He even abandoned his own war hero- Selvan has little fondness for the infamous Valkyrie, but he knows she deserved better than what she was given.

Selvan is not a fighter, not like Dias was. Much as he would like to, he can't take Hugo's self-righteous head off at the shoulders. But, he realizes, he doesn't need to. All he has to do is wait, and watch as Hugo loses what little remains to him. Watch him unable to grasp what's going on enough to grieve the loss, because his arrogance will not allow it. And then, when Hugo is as powerless as Selvan is now, he will just... leave, knowing the general can't stop him.

He may have lost his life's work. He may have lost Dias. But he still has his life, so he will bide. Escape. _Rebuild._

The best revenge, he thinks, is to be able to forget the one who earned it.


End file.
